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But these are distinctinctly different things. When you produce food or clothing or shelter for yourself, that is your own personal property.

When you produce a good for the purpose of trading it, you are making a Commodity.

Food and clothes that you produce for yourself are not commidities, and the commodities of food and clothes which you purchase and then use stop being commodities the moment they are taken out of the system of trade and put to use/consumed.

This clarification on the Commodity is crucial.

It's also completely arbitrary. The goods that you create for yourself are no different than the goods that you create for sale or trade. What you dispose of is surplus, but how much of what you decide to dispose of is based on the costs vs. benefits. If I am offered enough for something that I intended to use, it becomes worth my while to sell it and use the money to either expand my production facility, buy a substitute, or go on vacation. It doesn't really matter what I choose to do with the surplus, or how much of what I produce becomes surplus, as long as the choice is mine.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

A person can create a good for their own use or they can create a commodity, and own it themselves before they trade it themselves, but none of this falls under the category of Private Property in the sense that I am using it here.

The problem with the Private ownership of the means of production of commodities is that other people are the ones who are imparting the necessary labor required to give the commodity it's Value, which is expressed in it's Exchange Value, which is represented in it's Price (with fluctuations occurring based on supply and demand changes). The value of a commodity originates in the labor used to create it, so the workers are the ones who, by using their labor power, create commodities. Private Ownership of the factory or land or whatever means that workers become alienated from the products of their own labor.

Not this drivel again. "Alienation from the products of their own labor"? I can't believe that you believe this, and I'm not sure whether to pity you for your blindness, or be insulted that you presume that I'm stupid enough to buy it. You're anthropomorphizing a relationship between workers and their products, assuming emotional connections that don't exist. Have you ever had a real job? I mean, seriously, have you ever done anything besides being an academic? A software engineer isn't alienated from his code, it's what he produces. It's his product, which he exchanges for a salary. If he's any good, he takes pride in what he does, and his value as a worker is based on how well he does his job, but to pretend that he is "alienated" from the product of his labor is just absurd.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

When I speak of Private Property, I am not talking about Personal Property (which is all of the stuff that you use or consume, that you feed yourself and your family with, including your clothes and your tv and your car and your toys and so on).

I know some people get extremely hung up on definitions, so let's just, for the sake of discussion, draw a distinction between these two.

No. Not for the sake of discussion, nor for any other sake. I don't do fantasy economics.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

Everything that you consume or your family consumes, that you use for their use-value (like clothing being used to clothe you, or food being used to eat) all fall under the category of Personal Property.

No, it is all the same. There is no distinction. It's all private property until you choose to exchange it for someone else's private property.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

When you own the means of production, like say, a factory, which is used to extract value from workers who put in the labor needed to create goods, then this is Private Property.

No. You are not "extracting" value from workers, you are making a trade. You are trading the wages that they want for the labor that you want. The end result is the product of the factory, which you sell for a profit. There is no exploitation, just voluntary contracts between people who are trading what they have.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

Again, not everyone will agree with this distinction, but let's agree to use it just for this discussion:

I've got a better idea. Not everyone will agree that unicorn farts can power a city, but let's agree to use that for this discussion.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

I agree that there is nothing wrong with Personal Property, and my criticisms of Private Property are only with regard to the 2nd category listed there.

Which is no different than the first category, but which you are pretending has some difference due to ideology.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

So, if we only look at the 2nd category of Private Property, why is that form of Property necessary for freedom? Why is private ownership of the means of production necessary for Freedom?

Because it is all the same. If I own a single kiln, and produce X number of pots, some of which I can use, and some of which I can sell, then the only thing that determines what I keep and what I sell is how much I can realize on my initial investment of time, effort and capital. If, instead of keeping some of the pots, I sell them all, and invest in a second kiln, and take on an apprentice, I've increased my output, and provided a wage for the apprentice, who is free to save his money and buy his own kiln, or stay and work for me and spend his money on other pursuits. But, unless I own my own kiln, I can't decide to buy a second one and create more wealth. Unless I own what I produce, I cannot decide to sell more than I might have and use the surplus to expand my business. The elimination of private property eliminates my choices, my freedom to act in my own interest. That is what you are failing to understand. Without the capacity to decide how I use a surplus, the freedom to choose, I have no freedom to do anything else. Eliminating my ownership of a productive enterprise doesn't suddenly make a worker prudent, clever or diligent, it just punishes me for my prudence, planning and diligence.

Originally Posted by Wei Wu Wei

The problem here is misplacing the source of value in commodities. Value comes from the workers, because it is labor that creates commodities. Labor is the only commodity that produces more value than it's own value.

No, the problem is pretending that there is a difference between what I produce for my own consumption and what I produce to sell. It all comes from the same place, and like Marx, who also never worked a day in his life, you romanticize labor that you have never done, and vilify intellectual efforts that you don't understand.

Originally Posted by PoliCon

Castro was never overthrown because the Cuban exiles living in Miami have grown fat and comfortable and LAZY and have no interest in fighting to take back what is theirs. They want someone else to hand it to them.

Well, getting their asses shot up after JFK pulled the air support at the Bay of Pigs might have impacted their enthusiasm a little, too.